The Dead Tracks (48 page)

    She
dropped back on to one of the sofas. Next to her was a remote control. She
picked it up and turned off the TV.

    We
both sat.

    'How
are you feeling?' Healy asked, smiling again. It was weird seeing him like
this. Smiling didn't seem to come easily to him, but he was a convincing Mr
Nice Guy.

    'Okay,'
she said quietly.

    She
looked between us, waiting for us to react to her face. When no reaction came,
she nodded at a sheet of paper on top of the TV. It was the list of names she'd
been referring to. From where I was sitting, it looked like there were only
about six. At the top were the words
Operation Gaslight.
At the bottom,
in the same handwriting:
These people ONLY.

    'Why
aren't you on the list?' she said to Healy.

    Healy
looked at me, and then back at Sona. He sat forward. 'Okay, truth time. I'm on
the task force, but I'm on the outside. Not as far in as I'd like to be.'

    A
flash of fear in her face.

    'It's
all right,' he said, holding up a hand. He paused, glanced at me. Another
pause, as if unsure whether to commit himself. 'Nine months ago, my daughter
was taken — just like you.'

    Her
expression changed; the embers of the fear fading, replaced by a flicker of
surprise. She looked between us but didn't say anything.

    'I
know the man who took you, took her. I knew it as soon as we got to you. I knew
it was the same prick…' He stopped. 'Sorry.'

    Sona
just nodded.

    'Anyway,
a week ago, David was approached by the family of Megan Carver to look into her
disappearance. When that happened - when I found out some of the things he'd
discovered — I realized it was time to do something. It was time to find this
guy. Because no one else cared about finding my girl. They think she ran away
from home because…' He paused again, took a sideways glance at me. 'Because we
weren't getting on so well as a family.'

    I turned
to Healy as he was talking, surprised he was being so honest. Maybe he figured
Sona had been lied to enough. Everything Markham had fed her. Everything
Phillips and Hart were making her believe. Or maybe he saw it as the best way
to get her to talk. Problem was, Sona wasn't an ordinary victim, and Healy
wasn't an ordinary detective. He was personally invested in her answers, and he
needed her much more than she needed him. She was quiet and introspective,
driven into her shell by the man who had taken her, and bringing her back out
again could take weeks. We had hours.

    'So,'
he said, picking up the conversation again, 'in order to find him, in order to
stop this, I was wondering whether we could go over some of what happened to
you.'

    He got
the reaction I expected: nothing. She looked away, over to the laptop, where
the picture of Liz and me still showed.

    Healy
leaned forward, trying to soften his face. 'Sona?'

    'I
can't remember,' she said.

    He
glanced at me. 'Okay.' He readjusted himself, preparing to come at it again.
'Maybe we could start with the man who took you. Daniel Markham. I think you
used to call him Mark?'

    She
flinched a little. But didn't reply.

    'Could
you tell me about him, do you think?'

    Nothing.

    'Sona?'

    'I
can't remember,' she said.

    Healy
leaned further forward, but this was going nowhere. The secret was to find the
chip in her shield that you could slowly open up in order for everything to
pour out. Firing a succession of questions at her, or rephrasing the same one,
wasn't going to work.

    'So,
do you remember anything about the day you were taken?' he asked.

    She
was looking off into space.

    'Any
detail, however small?'

    She
shook her head.

    'Even
if you think it's unimportant?'

    Another
prolonged silence. Healy paused. Moved in his seat. I could sense he was
getting frustrated, but only because we were really short on time. He'd done
thousands of interviews. He could pace himself, or he could go in hard and
fast, but normally he didn't have to keep an eye on the minute hand. The danger
here was that the harder he tried to dig in, the less he'd get out of her, and
the more the frustration would build. He shuffled right to the edge of the
sofa.

    'Sona,
we just need to stop this guy.'

    She
looked down into her lap. We both watched her for a moment, but when she didn't
make a move to engage us, Healy glanced at me. I shook my head.
Don't say
anything else.
He gave me the look, the one that told me I was overstepping
whatever mark he'd made for me in his head. But he was too close to what was
happening — he was relying too heavily on her answers — to see why she'd gone
back into her shell. In another place, on another case, he may have seen it
clearly. But not now.

    'You
don't have to feel alone,' I said.

    She
looked up at me. I didn't take my eyes off her, and she didn't take hers off
mine. This was the chip in her shield.

    'It
won't always be like this,' I continued. You feel betrayed, I understand that.
You feel abandoned, and not just by Daniel Markham — by the police as well.
You've been left here, and you've been forgotten about, and all anyone ever
seems to want from you are answers.'

    Her
eyes flicked to Healy, and then back to me. She leaned forward, crossing her
arms, almost hugging herself.

    'Meanwhile,
you can't go to sleep at night without fearing that he's going to come back for
you. Because that's what the police have told you.'

    Finally
I moved closer to her, right to the edge of my seat so that our knees were only
inches apart. She glanced down and then back up to me.

    'But,
Sona, let me tell you something: he doesn’t know where you are. He isn't coming
back for you. And you're completely and absolutely not alone.'

    I
moved away from her. She looked at Healy, and then back to me, but didn't
speak. I eyed Healy, telling him not to jump in.

    'How
do you know he's not coming for me?'

    Her
voice seemed small after the quiet of what had preceded it. Healy leaned
forward again. 'Sorry, I didn't catch that,' he said.

    But
she was looking at me.

    'How
do you know he's not coming for me?'

    'He
doesn’t know where you are,' I replied. 'And he's not about to find out.'

    She hesitated
for a moment, as if the thought of going back would be too painful. Her fingers
moved together, sliding around her knee and pulling it into her. An action of
protection; subconsciously forming a barrier between us. She glanced off for a
second, into the space of the living room. Then her eyes came back to us.

    'Okay,'
she said quietly. 'I guess we should start with Mark.'

    Gradually
— very gradually — Sona began to tell us about how she met Markham. She was a
receptionist at St John's Hospital, where Markham had worked, and he'd gone up
and started talking to her. He told her he hated the name Daniel, and that most
people at the hospital just called him Mark. He wouldn't have been trying to
conceal his identity - everybody at the youth club already knew his real name -
so it was likely that when he told Sona about his name he was, for once,
telling her the truth.

    He'd
probably never looked at her twice before then, even though they'd worked in
the same place — but then Glass had discovered her somehow, perhaps after
following Markham's movements in and around the hospital, and he'd told Markham
to move in on her. Blonde hair, blue eyes. She fitted his twisted fantasy
perfectly.

    Sona
revealed how Markham had been nervous and shy to start with, almost as if he
was inexperienced with women. But, in truth, he wasn't shy - he was just being
eaten up by the idea of leading another woman into the hands of a psychopath.

    'Do
you remember the day he attacked you?' Healy asked.

    She
frowned, looking off, running her hand through her hair.

    'Not
much of it,' she said quietly. 'He took me for a picnic because it was my
birthday. I think maybe he drugged me or something. I started feeling a bit off
when we got there. Like a headache; a pressure between my eyes.'

    You
don't remember where you went?'

    Sona
shrugged. 'He blindfolded me. But I didn't feel scared. I know it sounds odd
him blindfolding me, but it wasn't like that. Or, at least, it never felt like
that. He said he wanted to take me somewhere as a surprise for my birthday. I
trusted him completely. We'd been seeing each other for almost six months.'

    
Almost
six months
. That meant Glass had moved Markham on to Sona only days after
Megan had been taken.

    'What
about after the blindfold came off?' Healy asked.

    She
shook her head. 'No. I mean, I remember snatches of stuff: he laid a blanket
out for us, and had brought a picnic basket. And I remember…' She paused. A
flicker. 'After he attacked me… I remember looking up at him, and I remember
what he said.'

    'What
did he say?'

    'He
said, "I can't do this any more."'

    We
both nodded, but didn't say anything.

    'The
next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hole in the ground.'

    Sona
paused, her eyes fixed off to our right, trying to pull memories out of the
darkness. She'd been found three weeks after she'd been taken, and while
forensics took urine samples, seventy-two hours was normally the ceiling for
IDing anything suspicious. Because of that, the police only speculated on what
caused the amnesia. It could have been flunitrazepam, better known as Rohypnol.
It would explain the headache and the periods of amnesia. Or it could have been
something else. Glass was a surgeon, after all; he would know which drug did
what, and how it would protect his plans.

    'Going
back to the picnic for a second,' Healy said. 'Do you remember anything about
your surroundings? It doesn’t matter if it seems small or unimportant.'

    'Most
of it… most of it's just a blank.'

    'You
mentioned a blanket,' I said. 'Were there a lot of trees?'

    She
looked at me. 'I'm not sure.'

    'We
think he took you to a place called Hark's Hill Woods. Does that name ring any
bells with you? Did Markham ever mention it?'

    Silence.
Eyes narrowing. Trying to remember.

    Finally,
she shook her head. 'I'm sorry.'

    'It's
okay,' I said, holding up a hand. I stopped for a second, to give her time to
resettle. 'In your statement, one of the things you did mention was hearing
things.'

    'Yes.
Visually, I've got this black wall I can't see past.' She paused. Touched a
finger to her face. 'But I can remember hearing something.'

    'What
do you think it was?'

    She
stopped for a moment.

    I
leaned forward. 'Sona?'

    She
looked up at me. 'Nothing I can make any sense out of.'

    I
looked at Healy and shook my head.
We'll come back to that
. The worst
thing we could do was try to force her to remember something. If you tried to
force an answer, it either drove them further away or it pressurized them into
making something up.

    'Can
I ask you about him?' I said.

    'Mark?'

    'No.
The man who kept you prisoner.'

    She
nodded and shifted a little in her seat. I could smell her perfume briefly, and
in the bathroom the extractor fan had finally stopped. Complete silence now.

    'Did
you get a look at him?'

    'Never
in daylight, but I saw him a couple of times looking down at me from the edge
of that hole.'